


The Perfect Number

by painted_pain



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Pain, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-31
Updated: 2012-03-31
Packaged: 2017-11-02 20:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/372881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/painted_pain/pseuds/painted_pain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty-eight neat, little lines in the sore looking skin of his Dad’s side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Perfect Number

Sam is lying on his back on his bed, scratchy comforter shoved down and rumpled at the bottom because it’s Texas during the height of summer and it’s too fucking hot, sweat dripping and collecting in his clavicle, his belly button, the back of his knees and the crook of his elbow. His hair is heavy across his forehead and the nape of his neck and he finds himself wishing that he hadn’t rebelled against Dad’s order for short hair, be a soldier, be a hunter, be all that he can be as long as it’s what Dad wants him to be. Fuck. It’s too hot to even think, brain sluggish and barely moving, eyes stuck on the stained roof of his and Dean’s bedroom, half-lidded and lazy. The two windows above his bed are wide open, with mosquito netting stretched across and nailed in, like panting mouths waiting for a breath of fresh, cool air that isn’t forthcoming and through them, Sam can hear the chirping of insects and the dead silence that always accompanies oppressive heat.    
  
He can hear his Dad snoring in the other room, doped up on painkillers, can hear the sleepy pained grunts when he moves too much and pulls at the angry red stitches reaching down from his left shoulder to the right side of his ribs. In his mind’s eye, Sam can see all twenty-eight stitches, skin raised and puffy and far too red, put there by a well-practiced hand. He had watched Dean, hands gripping the white clean bandages that were to go on afterwards, teeth gritted and hot anger pulsing through his veins. Had watched Dean’s still hand, the calm set of his face, the easy and practiced way he had sewn their Dad back together again, already a pro at twenty.    
  
Twenty-eight neat, little lines in the sore looking skin of his Dad’s side and Sam’s mind, listless and lethargic as it is, won’t move on from the thought that twenty-eight would be the perfect age for a young hunter to be slaughtered doing the job that he does, saving people and hunting things, a thankless, murderous, dangerous job. Ripped to shreds by some vampire or werewolf. Killed by an angry, restless spirit, thrown about like a ragdoll, until limbs flop in exactly the same way. Yeah, Sam thinks, twenty-eight seems likely. More than likely. A good round, even number.   
  
The door in front of him flings open and Dean bursts through, panic on his face and sweat on his forehead, a desperate flush on his cheeks. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Sam just looks at him, Dean’s chest heaving and Sam doesn’t want to know, not willing to believe it, still clinging to the hope he’d bandied about for the past three days, pleading Dean not to say it. Dad’s forty-five, he’s not twenty-eight and Sam hates hospitals, having watched his family lose too much blood in them. Dean says it anyway.   
  
“Sam, we have to get him to a hospital. We should have brought him fucking yesterday. He has septicaemia and don’t fucking pretend that it’s going to be alright.” Dean strides into the room, throwing clothes at Sam, glaring at him and trying to hide his fear behind it. It must be really fucking bad and Sam peels himself of the bed, flings his clothes and shoes on and watches Dean stride through the open door into the kitchen, rummage through the box on the table and come up with a secret wealth of fake credit cards and fraudulent insurance policies. Sam doesn’t even want to know what the cover story is going to be. This is why he hates hospitals because one day, they’re going to get caught.   
  
Sam helps Dean pick up Dad and place him gently on the back seat of the Impala and Sam nearly chokes on his own vomit when he sees how awful he looks, skin pale and grey, except for the wound, where it’s an angry, violent red, pus oozing out. It looks diseased.   
  
In the mad, fast dash to the hospital, Sam keeps repeating the mantra in his head  _Dad’s forty-five, not twenty-eight, he’s forty-five, he’s Superman, he always bounces back, he’s invincible, he’s the best_  and he almost convinces himself. Until he looks over at Dean and Dean is nearly as grey as their Dad lying unconscious in the back seat, green around the edges and so angry and worried and scared. Sam’s right, Dad’s forty-five,  _not_  twenty-eight and his luck can only last so long.   
  
In the end, he recovers, slowly, painfully, weeks spent at the hospital, an ugly looking scar their only reminder and the three of them stay in the one place that summer, in the two bedroom, one bathroom run-down shack, with peeling paint and damp-stained walls. For eight weeks, they have a home and every day, Sam thinks about those twenty-eight stitches, surrounded by pus and blood and skin. He thinks about the number twenty-eight, how it’s a lifetime in years, and how Dean’s lived most of that lifetime.   
  
Dean’s only twenty. That’s eight years. And Sam likes to pretend it’s the worst number in existence, the most catastrophic and destroying, when he knows it’s not. It might be to him, yes, maybe, but there is a number that could do even more damage, if only Dean knew it.    
  
He’s leaving in two years. Only two. And it’s the perfect number.


End file.
